ABSTRACT
The failure of Overend, Gurney, and Co. (Limited) has given occasion to a panic more suitable to their historical than to their recent reputation. It will be found that when that firm was converted into a private company we expressed ourselves most anxiously and guardedly as to the value of their shares. Of course we could not say what we then believed, and what was generally known, that the old firm had by most reckless management reduced one of the most profitable concerns in England to one of the most losing concerns. We can only say what we can prove, and though we thought this as much as we now think it, we could not say it in print without legal consequences. We expressed ourselves with guarded caution, and under the circumstances this is all which we could do. Now, no one doubts that the state of the Joint Stock Discount Company is very much like the last state of Overend and Co. wwlimited, and that there was much more excuse for the Joint Stock Discount Company than for this old partnership. The former had to make a business in opposition to extreme competition,—the latter had only to pick the best business. The plain truth is that Overend, Gurney, wwlimited, for the sake of high interest took bad securities, and in consequence someone must reap the due consequence of that badness.
